On Tues­day, CCRIF SPC (for­merly the Caribbean Catas­tro­phe Risk In­surance Fa­cil­ity) made an of­fi­cial pre­sen­ta­tion of US$1,284,882 to the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos. This pay­ment was due to Bar­ba­dos un­der its ex­cess rain­fall in­surance pol­icy which was trig­gered by rains from a trough sys­tem that oc­curred in the East­ern Caribbean on Novem­ber 21 and 22, 2014. Bar­ba­dos was the only CCRIF mem­ber coun­try with an ex­cess rain­fall pol­icy trig­gered by this trough sys­tem.

Mrs. Chere­bin in­di­cated that for many years, gov­ern­ments and other stake­hold­ers in the re­gion had been re­quest­ing CCRIF to pro­vide rain­fall cov­er­age, recog­nis­ing that rain­fall of­ten causes sig­nif­i­cant dam­age in the re­gion. She stated, “We are pleased that CCRIF was able this year to of­fer its mem­bers para­met­ric in­surance cov­er­age for ex­cess rain­fall in ad­di­tion to its cov­er­age for earth­quakes and trop­i­cal cy­clones.” Mr. Cox stressed the im­por­tance of the pay­out to the Gov­ern­ment: “This con­tri­bu­tion to the Trea­sury comes at a good time and will no doubt help us re­cover from the im­pacts of th­ese rains.

The funds will go into the Con­sol­i­dated Fund but we will ar­range for the Min­istry of Pub­lic Works to be able to use the re­sources for nec­es­sary re­pair work.”

Other per­sons in attendance at the cer­e­mony in­cluded rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Caribbean Risk Man­agers Ltd. (CCRIF’s Fa­cil­ity Su­per­vi­sor), and the heads of the Bar­ba­dos Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice and Depart­ment of Emer­gency Man­age­ment.

The ex­cess rain­fall prod­uct sold by CCRIF was de­vel­oped in part­ner­ship with rein­surer Swiss Re. It is based on the Caribbean Rain­fall Model op­er­ated by Ki­netic Anal­y­sis Corp. It is aimed pri­mar­ily at ex­treme high rain­fall events of short du­ra­tion (a few hours to a few days), whether or not they hap­pen dur­ing a trop­i­cal cy­clone (hur­ri­cane).

Ac­cord­ing to the Bar­ba­dos Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices, on Novem­ber 21 and 22, ap­prox­i­mately 152 mm of rain­fall was recorded at the Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tional Air­port in the south of the is­land. The rain­fall mea­sure­ment from satel­lite data over the same pe­riod in the cor­re­spond­ing area was 160 mm. How­ever, for this pe­riod, the Rain­fall Model pro­duced max­i­mum ac­cu­mu­lated rain­fall of 261 mm in the north­ern parishes. Th­ese val­ues were well over the thresh­old rain­fall value of 75 mm, where any­thing above that is con­sid­ered “sig­nif­i­cant”.

This pay­out brings to four the num­ber of pay­ments made by CCRIF this year on mem­bers’ ex­cess rain­fall poli­cies, to­talling ap­prox­i­mately US$3.4 mil­lion. An­guilla re­ceived two pay­outs – for Trop­i­cal Cy­clone Gon­zalo and a trough that oc­curred on Novem­ber 7 – and St. Kitts & Ne­vis re­ceived a pay­ment, also for the Novem­ber 7 trough. Eight CCRIF mem­ber coun­tries – An­guilla, Bar­ba­dos, Do­minica, Gre­nada, Haiti, Saint Lu­cia, St. Kitts & Ne­vis and St. Vincent & the Gre­nadines – pur­chased ex­cess rain­fall poli­cies for the first time for the 2014/2015 pol­icy year.

This is the sec­ond pay­out re­ceived by Bar­ba­dos since CCRIF’s in­cep­tion in 2007. The Gov­ern­ment re­ceived a pay­ment in 2010 of over US$8.5 mil­lion on its trop­i­cal cy­clone pol­icy after the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane To­mas.

Mrs. Chere­bin ac­knowl­edged that “in pur­chas­ing CCRIF in­surance as part of its dis­as­ter man­age­ment, Bar­ba­dos has shown that it is tak­ing a proac­tive ap­proach to dis­as­ter man­age­ment thereby min­imis­ing the ef­fects of nat­u­ral dis­as­ters on its growth prospects.” She urged re­gional gov­ern­ments to en­sure “that they have in place com­pre­hen­sive dis­as­ter man­age­ment poli­cies and plans and have ad­e­quate al­lo­ca­tions in their bud­gets for dis­as­ter man­age­ment and re­cov­ery to re­duce their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties to nat­u­ral haz­ards.” Mr. Cox sig­nalled his agree­ment by say­ing that “the Gov­ern­ment of Bar­ba­dos will con­tinue to con­trib­ute to CCRIF so that when events such as this oc­cur, the coun­try can po­ten­tially re­ceive pay­ments for re­cov­ery ef­forts.”